The only commercial CDs that works are the ones that contains the PAK files in the ID1 directory. Some CDs, like mine, have the PAK files compressed in the installer. In this case, you will need to install Quake in your PC so you can get the PAK files and burn them into a CD.

Also, by playing with a commercial CD the game will not have access to the several bugfixes and the improved content included in the file pak10.pak.

fackue wrote:

Will it load automatically?

The modlist will automatically detect any valid directories and display them. After this, you must press the A button to start the game. The game only starts automatically if you burn the engine and only one game (mod, TC, mission pack, normal Quake) in the same disc.

nxMakaqu 1.2 is the only Quake engine I've tried on DC, and it's great. Of course any improvements would be welcome if possible, but right now it's very playable, with great speed and mod compatibility.
I guess what I'm trying to say is thanks for this, we're having fun with it as it is now

Only a few ideas that seem either too much work or too hard - basically pipe dreams.

A) Hardware acceleration, using the PVR2's VRAM to free up main ram along with an increased resolution and framerate increase. This is the biggest update any Quake engine going from software to hard would ever receieve - basically like titaniums release.

B) Frikfile being saved on the VMU, even if it's just 1 file at a time. So if you're playing Prydon with Frikfile, it'd save it, then loading another mod using it would overwrite it since it can only use 1 Frikfile at a time (It'd be cool for a way around this ofcoure).

That's all I can think of, ofcourse I don't ever expect this and I'm not asking for it at all - you've done enough for the DC Quake community Fragger far more then I have or ever will.

_________________"I'm convinced RenegadeC is in fact not a human, but rather an experimental IRC/QuakeC bot who has the ability to randomly formulate mods and code them, programmed to have a distinct Canadian personality as well."

[nods] This most recent release is quite good. The only things I can think of to add / change are rather major rewrites, and would take serious dedication:

- Hardware rendering, filtering, and effects (of course). This is what everyone wants, but unfortunately, will probably never see. Everyone wants to see the game rendered in a resource-efficient high-res mode with filtering, and reworked for true transparencies etc. From what I've gathered, though, this would require a very heavy rewrite of the Quake graphics engine, so I doubt it'll ever show up.

- More thorough Dreamcast-ization. Things like a menu option for moving the HUD to the VMU (or possibly even a wireframe overhead map like in DOOM, but this is probably not realistic), integrating Dreamcast control configuration into the main menu, support for the DC modem, and other general tweaks to make the game feel more like a Dreamcast title rather than a program that got shoehorned onto the Dreamcast.

- Support for as many of the common engine cusomizations and advanced effects as are practical. Again, this is such a major undertaking that I doubt we'll ever see it.

- An option for widescreen output. I don't know whether this would be realistic or not.

- One thing that may actually be possible: a more polished mod selector. Perhaps even rework this in terms of a startup menu (like the Inducer menus), so that when you hit "Quit" in Quake you're dropped directly back to the modlist.

That's about all I can think of, and as I readily admitted, most of it's not very realistic. You've done an excellent job with this.

I think the biggest improvement that could be made easily (relatively) to it would be removing sdl in the sound code.

Disabling the sound altogether makes it only 1 FPS faster. I know there are a few issues with SDL, like the memory leaks, but so far I haven't had problems with it. Plus, I know nothing about audio programming (this is actually the main reason why I didn't do it).

Quote:

Frikfile being saved on the VMU, even if it's just 1 file at a time. So if you're playing Prydon with Frikfile, it'd save it, then loading another mod using it would overwrite it since it can only use 1 Frikfile at a time (It'd be cool for a way around this ofcoure).

This is on my "to do" list since the version 1.0. Saving files in the VMU is easy, but I still haven't figured out how to integrate it in a simple and easy way for both the modders and the end users.

So far my plans are to save the files on the VMU, using the same name of the other VMU files for the game, but with the extension F##. What I haven't figured out yet is when is the best time to save and to load the files, how to associate each FrikFile with a specific VMU file, and some other stuff. I want to find a way for this to be done automatically with no need to change the QC code.

But I will probably find an adequate way to do it, as this is a feature I may need in the future.

DaMadFiddler wrote:

a menu option for moving the HUD to the VMU

Actually, there's a good chance of this happening, because I'm planning to use this feature in my current project.

DaMadFiddler wrote:

a wireframe overhead map like in DOOM

This is impossible because of the complexity of the Quake maps. Displaying a kind of pre-made map would be possible, but would be kinda hard to implement and would require extra content.

DaMadFiddler wrote:

integrating Dreamcast control configuration into the main menu

I'm not sure what you mean, could you elaborate more? The controller's commands can be changed in the Customize Controls menu, and the sensitivity and deadzone of each analog input can be customized in the Controller Options menu.

If a mod/TC uses a command not available in the Customize Controls menu, you can add it by adding the line "menu_keys_addcommand newcommand" to the file autoexec.cfg.

DaMadFiddler wrote:

support for the DC modem

That's beyond my skills.

DaMadFiddler wrote:

Support for as many of the common engine cusomizations and advanced effects as are practical.

Many extensions implemented in Makaqu were taken from other engines. I usually implement something when it is easy to do, or when I think that it is very necessary. Also sometimes I don't add a feature because I don't remember to do it.

DaMadFiddler wrote:

An option for widescreen output.

I'm not sure about this because I don't have a widescreen TV. But if all that's needed is a certain resolution and aspect ratio, it's doable.

DaMadFiddler wrote:

One thing that may actually be possible: a more polished mod selector.

Hmm... any ideas? What I can think of are a screenshot display, a background image, and support for longer descriptions.

DaMadFiddler wrote:

Perhaps even rework this in terms of a startup menu (like the Inducer menus), so that when you hit "Quit" in Quake you're dropped directly back to the modlist.

This is complicated. The Quake engine wasn't designed to be restarted "on the fly", so there's no way to go directly back to the modlist. I only see two ways to make the modlist appear again:
- Rebooting the Dreamcast. This will be useless if the disc you're using is not selfboot.
- Loading the engine's binary from the CD, as the bootdiscs does. This only works if you have a binary of the engine in the disc you're playing, which may not happen if you swapped discs.

Does KOS support widescreen? I've never heard of any homebrew that does this. I can imagine though, that if it is a manually selectable option (and not a function of the hardware, or something that is auto-sensed), then all it would require is a switch "widescreen<=>fullscreen" that would change the aspect ratio.

_________________"When you post fewer lines of text than your signature, consider not posting at all." - A Wise Man

I forgot to ask something: Does anyone know if the default vibrations are working on official jump packs? What I did was to turn on most bitflags in the Puru Puru command buffer. The resulting effect is quite crappy in my unofficial Jump Pack, but I hope it works in the official ones.

Vibration works on my Performance-brand pack. I don't think I have any first-party ones lying around to test with, though. It's still better than the everything-does-full-strength-for-one-second vibrations on BOR; I ended up having to pull the rumble out for that game, because it was screwing with my hand.

As for widescreen, you could always do it the cheap way: keep the current resolutions, but widen the view area proportionately. That way, when the widescreen stretches it to fit, it will look proportionate again. Once the code is in place, ust add a menu option to toggle this on/off, and you're set.

I'm not sure about this because I don't have a widescreen TV. But if all that's needed is a certain resolution and aspect ratio, it's doable.

All you need to do is set up the renderer with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The screen resolution doesn't need to change. Widescreen TVs will then usually display the signal correctly, while it will look squished on a normal TV.

The most important thing is to make sure that fiddling with the aspect ratio make more stuff viewable on the sides of the screen, rather than cutting off the top and bottom.

Quote:

- Loading the engine's binary from the CD, as the bootdiscs does. This only works if you have a binary of the engine in the disc you're playing, which may not happen if you swapped discs.

That's what nxDoom did. When you hit the quit option on the menu, it loaded the 1ST_READ.BIN file off the disc, descrambled it, and executed it.

Quzar wrote:

Does KOS support widescreen?

Doesn't have to. For 3D games, you just need to change the aspect ratio of the rendered scene. There is no other way to do widescreen on any hardware unless you have a DVI output or similar.

Does KOS support widescreen? I've never heard of any homebrew that does this. I can imagine though, that if it is a manually selectable option (and not a function of the hardware, or something that is auto-sensed), then all it would require is a switch "widescreen<=>fullscreen" that would change the aspect ratio.

_________________"When you post fewer lines of text than your signature, consider not posting at all." - A Wise Man

I'd be more than happy to test any widescreen builds. I have a widescreen TV, and I can hook up two Dreamcasts so I can switch instantly between the "normal" build and one reworked for widescreen to make sure there aren't any discrepancies.

_________________"I'm convinced RenegadeC is in fact not a human, but rather an experimental IRC/QuakeC bot who has the ability to randomly formulate mods and code them, programmed to have a distinct Canadian personality as well."

I don't know. It might be worth a try. However, the existing hardware renderer in Makaqu is totally broken, much as the software renderer is in most GLQuake derived engines, and it'd take a fair bit of work to get that working again.

The best way to do it would probably be to strip the GL renderer down to virtually nothing - just enough for the thing to run, load levels, and and generally run without actually rendering anything. Then, you could build a new Dreamcast-specific renderer on top of it. You could either use KGL, or parallax. Parallax would probably be the best bet - it's more difficult to use, but you get a lot more control, and it can be a lot faster.

Of course, actually building that renderer would be the difficult part. Especially lightmaps and dynamic lights. I know roughly how to do the former, although I have very little idea how Quake does it, and have no idea at all about how to do the latter without doing something totally different to Quake.

1. Some games will only show the Demo, but gameplay is that of Quake.
2. Some games show up on the Quake Engine but 'work' (ie Kickflip).
3. Some games you must redo the controls, as they are not manually set.

Also, I have a question : Is it possible to use an updated / patched version of Quake or just stock version from the CD? If so, will there be an issues, possibly better compatibility??

_________________"In the language of the flower, red geraniums represent determination"

If I learn a little more I'm almost sure I could get all the 2D elements rendered with hardware acceleration in the DC, without using any code from the GLQuake renderer. However, this wouldn't make enough difference if the 3D rendering is still done in software. And as I said before, I have no idea on how to rewrite the 3D hardware renderer to work on the Dreamcast. It would probably be fun to do, and I want to learn about how to make a hardware-accelerated 3D renderer in the future, but the chances are that I won't be working with the Dreamcast anymore by then.

This is not a bug. I removed the +mlook command from the engine because it became obsolete.

Vash*The*Stampede wrote:

Prydon Gate v1.5 : Fatal Error, Hunk Alloc. - failed on 2784 bytes

Most probably, there was not enough RAM available.

Vash*The*Stampede wrote:

Some games will only show the Demo, but gameplay is that of Quake.

This happens in Quakeworld mods. I could make the engine display a warning about this if there is a qwprogs.dat and no progs.dat in the game directory.

Vash*The*Stampede wrote:

Some games show up on the Quake Engine but 'work' (ie Kickflip).

What do you mean?

Vash*The*Stampede wrote:

Some games you must redo the controls, as they are not manually set.

This is not a bug. The default controls are defined in the config files, not in the engine. If a mod that was not made to run on the DC has a different default configuration, its default configuration will certainly not include button assignments for the DC controller. This is not a problem, because you can edit the config files for the mod before burning the disc, and you can also save your current configuration in the VMU after binding the controller's buttons.

Vash*The*Stampede wrote:

Is it possible to use an updated / patched version of Quake or just stock version from the CD? If so, will there be an issues, possibly better compatibility??

The file pak10.pak included in Makaqu contains the necessary patches for the Quake data files. It improves the original game, but it most likely will not make much difference in mods.

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